12-09-2009, 01:26 AM
As automobiles become increasingly user-independent and €Ëintelligent,€„¢ the demand for embedded electronic devices for use in cars is steadily increasing. This was indicated by increased demand for printed card buses (PCBs) that were destined for use as embedded devices in automobiles. PCB production rose in several parts of Europe, and experts in the industry are predicting moderate growth worldwide in the near future.
Embedded systems, because of their small size, low power consumption and rapid response rates have become valuable to the automotive industry as parts of safety components, sensors and on-board computers.
Virtual Mechanisms Powered by Embedded Systems
Car manufacturer, Porsche, in cooperation with dSPACE of Germany, has developed an electronics system that simulates the forces at work when one shifts gears. The shift force simulator simulates the normal operating conditions of a car from a driver€„¢s perspective. Available inputs include the gear stick and pedals. Data from those input methods are then fed into a computer, which calculates the appropriate type and amount of feedback to the user.
Porsche€„¢s shift force simulator aims to give developers better testing facilities before a prototype is designed and fabricated. The fabrication of a prototype was necessary in previous cases in order to fully test the effectiveness of a gear shift design. The model is equipped with a dSPACE- manufactured Controller board. The software systems are designed primarily by Porsche.
Intelligent Cars
Germany-based Volkswagen publicly released news about their new Golf GTI 53+1 automobile which is capable of autonomously driving itself along a known or preprogrammed course. According to Volkswagen representatives, the designation pays homage to movie star car Herbie, a self-driving Volkswagen Beetle emblazoned with the number 53 on its hood.
This intelligentâ„¢ automobile from Volkswagen uses radar and laser sensors concealed in its front grilles to detect the path and the road in front of it. The information from the front sensors is fed into the vehicleâ„¢s on-board computer, which coordinates with a global positioning system to pinpoint its precise location.
This automobile is also equipped with a MicroAutoBox from dSPACE and acts as the vehicleâ„¢s electronic control unit. The MicroAutoBox uses several programs and applications to receive and interpret data, determine the best path for the car and then send instructions on to different car components
How its Possible Using MAtlab
Embedded System Design
Among the challenges of embedded automotive systems development involves correctly implementing requirements and specifications created by the system designer. These specifications are often delivered to embedded systems and software engineers in the form of written documents, flow charts, and sample code that must then be manually implemented in the embedded system.
With Model-Based Design, everyone works from the same models, avoiding time-consuming, manual coding tasks and reducing the potential for errors. Ultimately, this approach lets you produce better products, faster and at lower cost.
Simulink® and other MathWorks tools reduce development time and costs by enabling you to:
Run real-time plant simulations with hardware-in-the-loop systems
Rapidly prototype ideas on real vehicle systems
Generate production C code from models
Algorithm Design
MATLAB® and its toolboxes for signal processing, control design, optimization, neural networks, and other techniques provide a rich environment for designing new algorithmic operations and evaluating their feasibility for powertrain, chassis, safety, and infotainment systems.
Rapid Prototyping
Simulink software and Stateflow® models can automatically generate code for real-time execution, enabling you to analyze and refine algorithms prior to deployment on embedded systems. xPC Target„¢ software and real-time systems from MathWorks partners provide a broad range of rapid-prototyping hardware options. These systems let you perform functional prototyping, bypass prototyping, and on-target rapid prototyping.
Production Code Generation
From the models you create, MathWorks code generation tools produce efficient, readable code for systems with limited resources, such as engine control systems, chassis control systems, climate control supervisory logic, and power seats. Generated code can be targeted to specific processors and operating systems commonly found in embedded automotive systems, including the Motorola MPC555 and HC12, Infineon C166, and the OSEK operating system.
The result is automatically generated code with RAM, ROM, and chronometric (CPU throughput) performance that often surpasses hand-generated code.
HDL Generation and DSP Testing
With the increasing use of DSP and FPGA functionality in embedded automotive systems, engineers are using many of the Simulink capabilities and blocksets traditionally used in the communications industry. The MATLAB and Simulink products provide an integrated environment for algorithm development, simulation, code generation, and verification to accelerate the design of signal processing and communication systems.
From Simulink, you can generate C code for DSP devices. Integration with tools from Texas Instruments, Xilinx, and Altera also enable you to test DSP functionality and generate HDL code for FPGA devices. In both cases, you eliminate the programming stage, accelerating the development and deployment process.
Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing
Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing is ideal when real hardware or vehicles are not available, or when you must test conditions that are dangerous or impossible to recreate with real vehicle systems. HIL testing lets you test embedded systems algorithms in real-time, in a lab environment.
You can create continuous- and discrete-time models of vehicle, driver, and road conditions in Simulink, and then generate code with the Real-Time Workshop® product for HIL testing. HIL enables the simulation of real production code on a surrogate target (desktop), the MathWorks xPC Target„¢ system, and a broad range of targets from MathWorks partners.
read more
http://infosysengineering-services/product-engineering/automotive-embedded-systems-services.pdf
http://ieeexplore.ieeexpls/abs_all.jsp?&...er=4343688
